Home >> Your Questions About Genetic Engineering >> Maybe GMO's aren't the problem. They are only the enabler in the case of Roundup Ready. Enabling food to be doused with it. Roundup is supposed to be safe on humans since it only attacks plants. Isn't our gut flora and fauna plant like? This retired MIT

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QMaybe GMO's aren't the problem. They are only the enabler in the case of Roundup Ready. Enabling food to be doused with it. Roundup is supposed to be safe on humans since it only attacks plants. Isn't our gut flora and fauna plant like? This retired MIT

Question submitted By: Steven Smith

Maybe GMO's aren't the problem. They are only the enabler in the case of Roundup Ready. Enabling food to be doused with it. Roundup is supposed to be safe on humans since it only attacks plants. Isn't our gut flora and fauna plant like? This retired MIT scientist explains my question. http://youtu.be/h_AHLDXF5aw

Plants are not "doused" in Roundup or, more precisely, its active ingredient glyphosate. Relatively small amounts of glyphosate are applied as weeds emerge. These die and do not compete against emerging glyphosate-resistant crops. Glyphosate is amazingly non-toxic to humans or any other animals. Acute effects are seen only at relatively high doses. The LD50 (the dose that kills half of the rats that consume the dose) is about 5,000 mg/kg of body weight. In other words, if you weigh 200 pounds, you'd have to drink about two pounds of the 41 percent commercial concentrate to have a 50 percent chance of dying. Of course, it is not recommended―ask any of the hundreds of people that have tried to commit suicide by drinking it. It takes a good dose to cause problems. Look up "glyphosate" and "suicide" in PubMed.

The flora of the gut are hardly plant-like—they are microbes, the vast majority bacteria. The "Roundup resistance" gene comes from a bacterium.

The woman in the YouTube video you sent is Dr. Stephanie Seneff. She is a computer scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. She is not a plant scientist, molecular biologist or expert in human disease. She uses the MIT affiliation and a Ph.D. to create arguments from authority without evidence. Her evidence is largely correlation. She claims that glyphosate causes autism. And obesity. And Parkinson's. And depression. And ADHD. And several other ailments.

She explains their effect being caused by "exogenous semiotic entropy," a phrase that, if Googled, gives you her paper in Entropy, a low-/no-impact physics journal that has a reputation of publishing anything for a fee. It claims peer review, but no biologist or medical researcher reviewed the work. The phrase "exogenous semiotic entropy" sounds fancy, but she's the first person to use it.

The big problem with glyphosate is not physiological; it is resistant weeds. Fortunately, new solutions are in the works. Glyphosate is a great tool for farmers; it keeps labor and fuels costs lower, and it allows for "no-till" farming, saving valuable topsoil.

When people refer to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), they are referring to precision plant breeding using genetic engineering. It allows plant breeders to take a desirable trait (like resistance to drought, insects, weeds, and disease) from one plant or organism and transfer it to the plant they want to improve, as well as make a change to an existing trait in a plant they are developing. You may have also heard of agricultural biotechnology or biotech seeds.... Read More

An "LMO" (Living Modified Organism) is basically a GMO that is alive and capable of passing on its genes to a subsequent generation. In most situations, the terms LMO and GMO are essentially synonymous, but neither term is really used by most biotechnologists! More on that below.
The term LMO was used in the Cartegena Protocol (basically a big document that came out of an international convention several years ago, more detailed info here.)
The reason we as... Read More

Response from: Professor Drew Kershen, Earl Sneed Centennial Professor of Law (Emeritus), University of Oklahoma, College of Law • on November 15, 2017

Biotechnology as a discipline focuses on understanding molecular biology and has applications in medicine/health, environmental science, industrial products and agriculture. Biotechnology is widely used in all these sectors. I will focus my answer on agricultural biotechnology.
In many countries (e.g., Brazil, Canada, India, and the United States) a significant amount of agricultural research, especially basic research in molecular biology, is conducted by governmental agricultural... Read More

About the Expert

Kevin Folta is a professor in and chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He got his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998, and he has worked at University of Wisconsin before settling in at University of Florida. Dr. Folta researches the functional genomics of small fruit crops, the plant transformation,...